And now for something completely different...

A short while ago, Terry Jones (one of the Monty Python crew) visted Boulder and presented his film Life of Brian, "a motion picture destined to offend nearly two thirds of the civilized world, and severely annoy the other third." Barbara and I went to see the movie (again) and to hear him talk about its production and other things Python. He had some funny stories. He talked about how Brian was banned in some places, including Norway. Apparently that was good for Swedish theatres -- they would advertise it as "the movie too funny to be shown in Norway!" Jones was, among many other roles, Brian's mother, Sir Bedevere in the Holy Grail ( "and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped") and, of course, the man with three buttocks.

That movie has generated some interesting conversation. Barbara laughed when she saw it and brought it home for her (far more conservative and life-long Catholic) parents to see. Her dad was not impressed. Chris has argued convincingly that the Mary's virgin pregnancy was more likely similar to that of Brian's mother: a rape that could not be acknowledged. (Correct me, Chris, if you've been misrepresented.) I've always thought that the way Brian ends up as Messiah (inadvertently having to perform with the local crop of prophets) was probably a fair depiction of the people's starvation for some spiritual guidance -- a ground so fertile that Jebus could found a religion that would last two thousand years.

Ok, that's my mental expurgation for the week. And now, for something completely different, I will leave you with this curiosity: lift a foot and make clockwise circles with it; now write the number six in the air; ohmygod, your foot is now rotating counterclockwise!